2009 Faculty, Special Guests, Administrative Staff, and Visiting Agents & Editors
NONFICTION FACULTY
Ted Conover’s Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Conover is also the author of Whiteout, Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America’s Mexican Migrants, and Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails with America’s Hoboes. He contributes to the New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Nation, and many other publications. Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he is Distinguished Writer-in-Residence in the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University.
Patricia Hampl's latest book is The Florist’s Daughter, a family memoir, recently released in paperback. She is the author of seven other books, including Blue Arabesque, also now in paperback, as well as A Romantic Education, Virgin Time, and I Could Tell You Stories, all named “Notable Books of the Year” by the New York Times Book Review. She has also published two collections of poems, numerous essays, travel pieces, book reviews and short fiction in magazines and newspapers, and serves as co-editor of the Sightlines literary nonfiction series for the University of Iowa Press. She is working on a book-length essay about Celtic spirituality, The Virtue of Heresy, and is co-editor of a new anthology, Tell Me True: Memoir, History and Writing a Life. She is Regents Professor at the University of Minnesota, a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, and is on the permanent faculty of the Prague Summer Program.
David Shields is the author of ten books, including the New York Times bestseller The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead (recently reissued in paperback), Reality Hunger: A Manifesto (forthcoming next year), Black Planet: Facing Race during an NBA Season (a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity (winner of the PEN Revson Award), and Dead Languages: A Novel (winner of the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award). Shields—whose work has been translated into German, French, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese, Turkish, Persian, Korean, and Japanese—is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and two NEA Fellowships.
POETRY FACULTY
Edward Hirsch, a 1998 MacArthur Fellow, has published seven books of poems: For the Sleepwalkers; Wild Gratitude, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Night Parade; Earthly Measures; On Love; Lay Back the Darkness; and, most recently, Special Orders. He has also published four prose books: How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry, a national bestseller; Responsive Reading; The Demon and the Angel: Searching for the Source of Artistic Inspiration; and Poet’s Choice. He is the editor of Transforming Vision: Writers on Art; and co-editor of A William Maxwell Portrait and The Making of a Sonnet: A Norton Anthology. He is president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Brigit Pegeen Kelly teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her poetry collections are The Orchard, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and the Pulitzer prize; Song, the 1994 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets and a finalist for the 1995 Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and To the Place of Trumpets, selected by James Merrill for the 1987 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award.
Alan Shapiro has published ten books of poetry, including Happy Hour , winner of the 1987 William Carlos Williams Award; Mixed Company, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; The Dead Alive and Busy, winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Song & Dance; and Tantalus in Love. His new book of poems, Old War, appeared in 2008. Shapiro has published two memoirs, The Last Happy Occasion, a 1996 finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Vigil. His translation of The Oresteia by Aeschylus appeared in 2003, and his translation of The Trojan Women by Euripides was published earlier this year. A recently elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Shapiro teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Tom Sleigh’s books include After One, Waking, The Chain, The Dreamhouse, Far Side of the Earth, Bula Matari/Smasher of Rocks, and a translation of Euripides’ Herakles. His book of essays, Interview With a Ghost, was published in 2006. His most recent book of poems, Space Walk, was published in 2007. Among his many awards are the Kingsley Tufts Award, the Shelley Prize from the Poetry Society of America, an Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, an Individual Writer’s Award from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches in the MFA Program at Hunter College and lives in Brooklyn.
Arthur Sze has published nine books of poetry, including The Ginkgo Light, Quipu, The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970–1998, and The Silk Dragon: Translations from the Chinese. He is the recipient of two NEA Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award, and an American Book Award. A professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts and the first poet laureate of Santa Fe, he is currently editing Chinese Writers on Writing.
Natasha Trethewey is the author of three collections of poetry, Domestic Work; Bellocq’s Ophelia; and Native Guard, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. At Emory University she is professor of English and holds the Phillis Wheatley Distinguished Chair in Poetry.
Ellen Bryant Voigt has published seven books of poetry: Claiming Kin; The Forces of Plenty; The Lotus Flowers; Two Trees; Kyrie, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and Teasdale Prize winner; Shadow of Heaven, a finalist for the 2002 National Book Award; and Messenger: New and Selected Poems 1976-2006, a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. She also co-edited Poets Teaching Poets: Self and the World, craft essays by faculty in the Warren Wilson MFA Program. Her own craft essays are collected in The Flexible Lyric (1999), and a new prose book, The Art of Syntax, is scheduled for publication in August 2009. She has been a Guggenheim, Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest, and NEA fellow, and the Vermont Poet Laureate (1999–2003). In 2002, she was inducted in the Fellowship of Southern Writers and received both the O. B. Hardison, Jr. Poetry Prize from the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Merrill Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, where she subsequently became a Chancellor. She designed the first low-residency MFA Program while at Goddard College, helped move it to Warren Wilson, and teaches in it still.
FICTION
Charles Baxter is the author of The Soul Thief; Saul and Patsy; The Feast of Love, a finalist for the National Book Award and made into a film by Robert Benton, starring Morgan Freeman; First Light; and Shadow Play. He has also published four books of stories, most recently Believers, and essays on fiction collected in Burning Down the House and Beyond Plot. He has edited or co-edited three books of essays, The Business of Memory, Bringing the Devil to His Knees, and A William Maxwell Portrait. Baxter lives in Minneapolis and is the Edelstein-Keller Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota.
Maud Casey is the author of the novels The Shape of Things to Come, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and Genealogy, a New York Times Editor’s Choice Book; and a collection of stories, Drastic. Her short fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in Threepenny Review, Gettysburg Review, Prairie Schooner, Forklift, Ohio, Post Road, New York Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, and Salon. In 2007, she received the Italo Calvino Prize. She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Maryland.
Vikram Chandra’s latest novel, Sacred Games, was the recipient of the Hutch Crossword Prize for English Fiction (India), a Salon.com Book Award for Fiction, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is also the author of Love and Longing in Bombay and Red Earth and Pouring Rain. His previous honors include the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book (Eurasia region) and the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book, the David Higham Prize, and the Paris Review Discovery Prize. He currently divides his time between Bombay and Berkeley, California, where he teaches creative writing at the University of California.
Robert Cohen is the author of four novels: Inspired Sleep, The Here and Now, The Organ Builder; and Amateur Barbarians (forthcoming 2009), as well as a collection of stories, The Varieties of Romantic Experience. His work has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Paris Review, Atlantic Monthly, Gentlemen’s Quarterly, Antaeus, and other magazines. His awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writer’s Award, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award, a Pushcart Prize, and the Ribalow Prize. He teaches at Middlebury College.
Lynn Freed’s books include Reading, Writing & Leaving Home, a collection of essays; The Curse of the Appropriate Man, a collection of stories; and five novels: House of Women, The Mirror, The Bungalow, Home Ground, and Friends of the Family. Her new novel, The Servants’ Quarters, will be published in April 2009. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Tin House, Southwest Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, New York Times, and Washington Post, among others, and are widely anthologized. In 2002, she received the inaugural Katherine Anne Porter Award for fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is also the recipient of fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Guggenheim Foundation, among others.
Ann Hood’s most recent book is The Knitting Circle. Her other novels include: Somewhere off the Coast of Maine, Waiting to Vanish, Three-Legged Horse, Something Blue, Places to Stay the Night, The Properties of Water, and Ruby. She has also written a memoir, Do Not Go Gentle: My Search for Miracles in a Cynical Time; a book on the craft of writing, Creating Character Emotions; and a collection of short stories, An Ornithologist’s Guide to Life. Her essays and short stories have appeared in Good Housekeeping, New York Times, Ladies Home Journal, More, Tin House, Ploughshares, and Paris Review, among others. Recipient of a Best American Spiritual Writing Award, the Paul Bowles Prize for Short Fiction, and two Pushcart Prizes, Ann Hood lives in Providence, Rhode Island, with her husband and their children.
Randall Kenan’s books include Walking on Water, A Visitation of Spirits, and Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, a collection of stories. The latter was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; it was selected as one of the New York Times Notable Books of 1992. His most recent book, The Fire This Time, is a work of nonfiction. The recipient of many awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the 1997 Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Kenan has also written a young adult biography of James Baldwin. He currently teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Thomas Mallon’s seven novels include Henry and Clara, Bandbox, Two Moons, and Fellow Travelers. He has written nonfiction books about plagiarism (Stolen Words), diaries (A Book of One’s Own), and the Kennedy assassination (Mrs. Paine’s Garage), as well as two volumes of essays (Rockets and Rodeos and In Fact). His work appears in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, New York Times Book Review, and other publications. He has been the literary editor of Gentlemen’s Quarterly and has taught at Vassar College and George Washington University. The recipient of Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships, as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award for reviewing, he lives in Washington, D.C.
Sigrid Nunez has published five novels, including A Feather on the Breath of God, For Rouenna, and, most recently, The Last of Her Kind. She has also been a contributor to numerous journals, including the New York Times, O Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, McSweeney’s, Threepenny Review, and The Believer. Among the awards she has received are a Whiting Writer’s Award, the Rome Prize in Literature, and a Berlin Prize Fellowship. She has been visiting writer or writer-in-residence at Amherst College, Smith College, Sarah Lawrence College, Washington University, Baruch College, and the University of California, Irvine. She has also been on the faculty of Columbia University and the New School.
Luis Alberto Urrea is the author of twelve books, including The Hummingbird’s Daughter, winner of the 2005 Kiriyama Prize, and The Devil’s Highway, 2004 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction and winner of the Lannan Literary Award. His first book, Across the Wire, was a New York Times Notable Book and won the Christopher Award, and his collection of short stories, Six Kinds of Sky, was named the 2002 Small Press Book of the Year in fiction by the editors of ForeWord magazine. His memoir, Nobody’s Son: Notes from an American Life, won a 1999 American Book Award. Urrea’s new novel, Into the Beautiful North, will be published in spring of 2009. A member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame and winner of the 2009 Luis Leal Award for Chicano Literature, Urrea is a professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago.
SPECIAL GUESTS
John Elder teaches English and environmental studies at Middlebury College and lives in the nearby village of Bristol with his wife, Rita. His most recent books, Reading the Mountains of Home, The Frog Run, and Pilgrimage to Vallombrosa, explore the meaning of Vermont’s landscape and environmental history for him as a teacher, writer, and householder. He is co-editor of the Norton Anthology of Nature Writing.
Lorrie Moore is the author of the story collections Birds of America and Self-Help, and the novels Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? and Anagrams. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories, and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. She is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
C. K. Williams’s Collected Poems appeared in 2006. He has published nine other books of poetry, the most recent of which, The Singing, won the National Book Award for 2003. His previous book, Repair, was awarded the 2000 Pulitzer Prize. He has published translations of Sophocles’s Women of Trachis, Euripides’s Bacchae, and poems of Francis Ponge, among others. His book of essays, Poetry and Consciousness, appeared in 1998, and a memoir, Misgivings, in 2000. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
ADMINISTRATION
Michael Collier, director of the Conference, is the author of five books of poems: The Clasp and Other Poems; The Folded Heart; The Neighbor; The Ledge, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and most recently, Dark Wild Realm. He is also co-editor, along with Charles Baxter and Edward Hirsch, of A William Maxwell Portrait. His translation of Euripides’s Medea appeared in 2006 and a collection of essays, Make Us Wave Back, in 2007. Collier has received Guggenheim and Thomas Watson fellowships, two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, a “Discovery”/The Nation Award, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, and Pushcart Prize. Poet Laureate of Maryland from 2001–2004, he teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Maryland.
Jennifer Grotz, assistant director of the Conference, is the author of Cusp, which won the Katharine Nason Bakeless Prize and the Natalie Ornish Best First Book of Poetry Prize from the Texas Institute of Letters. Her poems, essays, translations, and reviews have appeared widely in journals and anthologies, including Boston Review, The Southern Review, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, New England Review, and The Best American Poetry. A recipient of awards from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, and the Camargo Foundation, she teaches in the MFA Program at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.
Noreen Cargill, administrative manager of the Conference, has worked for Middlebury College since 2000. Previous jobs include working for a library, a bookstore, and a small publishing house. In addition to working for the College, she enjoys freelance writing when she can; publications include the Boston Globe, Better Homes and Gardens, Vermont Magazine, and Vermont Life.
VISITING AGENTS AND EDITORS
Miriam Altshuler, President, Miriam Altshuler Literary Agency
Julie Barer, President, Barer Literary Agency
Judy Clain, Executive Editor, Little, Brown and Company
Gary Clark, Development Director, Vermont Studio Center Thom Didato, Editor and Publisher, Failbetter.com
Katherine Fausset, Literary Agent, Curtis Brown, Ltd.
Ted Genoways, Editor, Virginia Quarterly Review
Amy Holman, Literary Consultant
Jenna Johnson, Senior Editor, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Carolyn Kuebler, Managing Editor, New England Review
Heidi Pitlor, Series Editor, The Best American Short Stories
Kathy Pories, Senior Editor, Algonquin Books
Alane Salierno Mason, Editor, W.W. Norton
Fiona McCrae, Editor-in-Chief, Graywolf Press
Martha Rhodes, Director, Four Way Books
Christina Ward, Literary Agent, Christina Ward Literary Agency
Mitchell S. Waters, Literary Agent, Curtis Brown, Ltd.
Michael Wiegers, Executive Editor, Copper Canyon Press